Poweredge M610 Blade SErvers and Windows XP

What RAID controller do you have in them?

Which Dell model is that? The H200? If so, you can try the 2003 driver for the H200, but your install media may have to have SP3, and you may need to integrate the driver into the media (e.g. using nLite (can find this with Google)).

LSISAS1080E-IR

I am trying ntlite now with a T5500 XP driver

The model is M610 as far as I know

That attempt failed.. now trying with the lsi win2k3 driver...

The RAID controller model is not M610 - that is the server model.  The LSI SAS 1080E will have a Dell name ... will be a SAS 6/iR, PERC 6/i, CERC 6/i, or PERC H200.  I believe the SAS 6 is the 1068E, but if you could give us a name, that would nail it down for us.  If it is the SAS 6 or PERC 6, then you can use the XP driver from a Precision workstation (T5500 or T7500), as they are the only Dell systems that support those controllers and will work with XP.

If the 1080E is a CERC 6/i or PERC H200, you will have a very difficult time finding a driver that will work, as no machines that run XP support those cards, so Dell will not have a driver for it.  As LSI makes these controllers for Dell, you may find a driver on their site that is similar enough to work, but I don't know what device that would be, and I did not see the 1080E on LSI's website.

I know that in the BIOS it says LSISAS1080E-IR... I assumed SAS 6/IR but I guess I was wrong...as none of the drivers I have tried work...

I looked again and it indeed a SAS/6 IR

Then you should be able to use the XP driver for a Precision Workstation ...

x86 -

x64 -

Thanks... already tried and failed....That's what's discouraging...

Did you use nLite?  Have you used nLite successfully before?  If not, how did you do it?

Are you installing x64 or x86 XP?  And you used the driver to match (it won't work otherwise)?

Do you have a USB floppy drive you could use to load the drivers in a more traditional way?

I didn't understand why you are loading XP on these ... is it possible for you to load XP in a virtual environment on them?

I did use ntlite... Never used it before...

I copied CD contents to a folder... used ntlite to integrate the driver from that package using the PNP driver.

We are doing X86... need to use XP for now... because of build tools being used... we are doing the same now on PE1950s

Tried doing it with the USB floppy drive... same problem

Ok, the driver should work, based on the following from the symmpi.inf.  You should have 7 files once you extract/unzip them ... I would confirm that is what you have before attempting to integrate into nLite - all 7 files should be on your floppy disk if you try that method):

DiskDesc = "Dell SAS 5x and SAS 6x Controller Driver (Windows XP 32-bit)"
DevDescD1 = "Dell SAS 5/E Adapter Controller"
DevDescD3 = "Dell SAS 5/i Integrated Controller"
DevDescD4 = "Dell SAS 5/iR Integrated Controller"
DevDescD5 = "Dell SAS 5/iR Integrated Controller"
DevDescD6 = "Dell SAS 5/iR Adapter Controller"
DevDescD7 = "Dell SAS 6/iR Adapter Controller"
DevDescD8 = "Dell SAS 6/iR Integrated Blades Controller" (* this is what you have *)
DevDescD9 = "Dell SAS 6/iR Integrated Controller"
DevDescD10 = "Dell SAS 6/iR Integrated Workstation Controller"

Select "Multiple Driver Folder" so it will include both INF's, and you will need to select "Textmode Driver".

Thanks Dev Mgr ... I meant to point out that the SAS driver requires at least Service Pack 2.  SP3 would be ideal.  If your XP media is not at least SP2, then use nLite to integrate SP2 or SP3 into the media.